Heaven’s All-Stars

I find this baseball site called The Dead Ball Era strangely fascinating. It’s dedicated to dead baseball players. But it’s not just a list of them, or a look at their careers, it’s focused on their deaths. They are categorized by cause of death (accident, murder, suicide) and “necrology by location”. There are special tributes to Thurman Munson and to the ’27 Yankees and a detailed look at the Ray Chapman beaning (Major League Baseball’s only on-field death). And you can find a scan of just about everyone’s newspaper obit.

The kicker is its collection of grave site photos. There are hundreds of pictures of the grave sites of players, managers, owners, umpires and their families.

Somehow, this is all pulled off as a loving tribute, not a sick obsession or a cold history. Which is good, because where else are people like Dusty Boggess (a National League umpire for 18 years) or John “Pa” Harkins (of the “famous battery of Harkins and Bushong” for Cleveland in 1884) going to be remembered?

[ via Sgt. Grump ]

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4 Responses to Heaven’s All-Stars

  1. brandelion says:

    morbid. fascinating. sweet link, Sol, thanks. 🙂

  2. etherian says:

    For some reason I couldn’t get the site to load. However, I found I think, an earlier site here: http://thedeadballera.crosswinds.net/. I was able to find my ancestor Addie Joss AND where he was buried.

  3. Linkmeister says:

    That’s quite a site. Makes my attempt to memorialize the Hawaii Islanders look a little sparse.

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